Containers or bottles made of leather, glass, plastic and other materials have been manufactured to store and deliver ingredients such as different liquors, body moisturizing lotions, chemical drain cleaners, two-part epoxies, drugs, food products including condiments, and other things which either benefit by being separately dispersed or are activated at the time of dispersal by mixing.
A dual chambered flask or bottle invented by Jacob Gruenebaum (U.S. Pat. No. 284,127) in August 1883 presented two oppositely inclined necks to obviate the need to raise the flask overly much for the purpose of imbibing its liquors or wines. However, this design would not stand on a shelf nor be suitable to contents of greater viscosity. A duplex tube was introduced by F. Stegath (U.S. Pat. No. 1,363,064, Dec. 21, 1920) which presented the convenience of keeping complementary items such as shaving cream and lotion at hand in one container, in this case a flexible squeezable metal tube. This would not be suitable to storage in an upright position on a shelf nor is it suitable for food products due to the strong association of such tubes with toiletry and medicinal items.
Various containers (e.g., Huenergardt, U.S. Pat. No. 2,661,870, December, 1953; Kuster, U.S. Pat. No. 3,197,071, December, 1962; Hoffman, U.S. Pat. No. 3,206,074, September, 1965; Newton, U.S. Pat. No. 3,467,269, September, 1969) present designs suitable to displaying and storing on a shelf, however they are unduly complicated and expensive to manufacturer. Dukess (U.S. Pat. No. 3,506,157, April, 1970) invented a closure device to seal a multiple chamber tube or bottle. The ingredients would tend to intermix upon the flat surfaces normal to the prongs. The invention of D. Gold Et Al (U.S. Pat. No. 3,729,553, April, 1973) is bulky and does not explain in what method the portrayed bottle is to be manufactured. Simmons (U.S. Pat. No. 4,148,417, April, 1979) invented a fluid dispenser having dual chambers formed by a cast molding process or, it was claimed, a blow-molding process. However, an adequate method to control the blow-molding of such a dual chamber is not reliably described.
Simmons is a dual-chamber container of substantially circular cross section and therefore the division is essentially identical to a longitudinal seam of an edge of the bottle when viewed frontally. In this it lacks the distinct graceful curving division inherent in the present invention. It is not addressed to and cannot as effectively serve the object of the present invention which is the attractive display of multiple contained ingredients in a consumer product.
Hood (U.S. Pat. No. 3,980,222, September, 1976) is a divided tetrahedral tube formed by looping, spindling and sealing and is therefore not a complexly curved surface. The line of division when viewed frontally is a straight line.
In traditional blow-molding the plastic is blown against the solid walls of an encasing metal mold. In order to make a dual chamber tube or bottle with a blow-molding process, two singularly molded halves are formed and glued together. The side-by-side nozzles are bulky or awkward and do not achieve the simplicity and efficiencies that is one of the aims of the present invention, nor do the nozzles achieve the aesthetic or marketing appeal. A further disadvantage is the splotchy appearance of glue on the dividing surface.
Markay et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,223,942 B1, May, 2001) is the only prior art known to the present inventors to address the object of displaying both of two contained ingredients simultaneously to a consumer. However, its method of two offset, conjoined separate bottles joined by a common cap sacrifices the sense of unity of a smoothly surfaced divided bottle that is an aim of the present invention.
Other background containers are directed to separating ingredients while stored but intermixing them before application of the ingredients for the purpose of activating the ingredients. Examples of such ingredients include body lotions, moisturizers, chemical drain cleaners, etc. One known design intermixes mustard and ketchup before application. The intermixing produces an unsavory appearance and loses any aesthetic delight of drawing designs in a dual color stream.
In known dual chamber bottles; a simple utilitarian joining of two halves has been utilized for such items as drain cleaners and two-part epoxies, or the ingredients and the means of separation are not viewable because the outer walls are opaque. Such packaging is not suitable to the demands of marketing and merchandising in highly competitive or “high-end” areas such as foods and cosmetics. Except for one instance which addressed the need to display both ingredients in a dual-ingredient bottle in an aesthetic way but did so losing the unity of a “single bottle”, the display and marketing function of the bottle, as opposed to simple containment, has not been addressed. Clearly this is an unrecognized problem when it comes to the real world of selling products in bottles. The present invention addresses and solves this problem.
In order to disperse the ingredients the bottle should be able to be squeezed. It is understood that a divider in a bottle strengthens the bottle in the planar direction of the divider, making it more difficult to squeeze the bottle in the planar direction. Most bottles for display on shelves are wider than they are deep. Any division of the bottle perpendicular to the front or back would inhibit the squeezing of the bottle because the squeezing would most desirably occur in the perpendicular direction along the divider. The present invention overcomes this problem, allowing the bottle to be squeezed in the normal and preferable way.
Alternatively, if the known bottle was divided such that the front and back halves were separated, then one ingredient would not be visible when the bottle was displayed facing front on a shelf. The present invention overcomes this problem as well.
Indeed the containment and display of products is a crowded field, and the need to present certain things in dual chamber bottles, such as mustard and ketchup, has long been felt but, despite market need, has not previously been met.
Accordingly, the background art has the disadvantages of at least being unduly complicated in design and costly in manufacture, not being suitable to standing on a shelf for display, failing to address the display function of the bottle, or losing the unity of the bottle for this purpose.